The present invention relates to an apparatus for recording position information of a principal image within a frame, and to a photographic printing method employing exposure control using the position information.
In recent years, the performance of photographic cameras has been improved considerably by automatic exposure control and focussing, and anyone can take a photograph properly. The performance of a photographic film and a photographic printer has also been improved. With such improvement, the quality of finished photoprints is quite excellent. According to a conventional photographic printing method, however, the photographing conditions and a photographer's intent are estimated from an image recorded on a photographic film, so that a finished photoprint in some cases may become unsatisfactory for the photographer.
In order to make photoprints matching the photographer's intent, there is a known camera capable of recording various information on a photographic film, such as a date and time of photographing, shutter speed, f-number and the like (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 51-117632, 59-214023, Japanese Utility Laid-open Publication No. 63-188644, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 64-6933, 63-201645, 49-74019, 55-101932, and 54-2115, and the like).
There also is a known photographic camera capable of recording illumination light type information (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 51-117632, 52-1333, 52-30429, and the like). Further, there is a known photographic camera capable of recording trimming information (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 63-298233, 64-21432, and the like). There also is a known photographic camera capable of recording characters indicating the type or the like of a principal subject (e.g.. Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 50-30517, 55-101932, 54-2115, and the like).
Various images in addition to a principal subject image (principal image) are recorded in one frame. It is known empirically that photographers will be satisfied if a principal image reproduced on a color paper has a proper density and color balance regardless of whether other images are finished improperly to some degree. It is not possible to identify a principal image within a frame of a photographic film taken with a conventional camera. There is a known method of determining the exposure amount Which results in a proper reproduction of a principal image by assuming that a principal image is located at the central area of a frame, and using for example a characteristic value obtained by weighting a photometric value at the central area. However, if the principal image is not within the central area of the frame, proper exposure control is impossible.
There is a known photographic film having not only a blue-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer, green-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer, and red-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer, but also such a layer of a different spectral sensitivity from that of the emulsion layers as provides an interlayer effect mainly to the red-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,663,271, 4,705,744, and 4,707,436, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 62-160448 and 63-89580).
There is described an effect of improvement on color reproduction at spectrum for a CL layer, in the "Journal of the Society of Photographic Science and Technology of Japan", Vol. 52, No. 1, pages 41-48. This technique provides a remarkably improved effect so long as such a film is printed under printing conditions suitable for realizing improvement of hue and saturation at specific spectrum.
However, it was confirmed that, if the photographic films formed by these techniques are developed and printed under the conditions determined such that other earlier types of photographic films without the above techniques are finished optimally, several tens % of the above improved films do not obtain the effect of such improvement as described above.
It is a principal object of this invention to provide a position information recording apparatus capable of recording the position information of a principal image on a recording medium, the position information being designated manually or detected automatically.
It is another object of the invention to provide a photographic printing method capable of preponderantly improving the quality of a principal image on a photoprint.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a photographic printing method capable of obtaining stable quality of finished photoprints by positively using the color reproduction of a photographic film having a donor layer with a particular interlayer effect.